The British government should have enough respect for Ecuador to honor the grant of asylum.
Syrian Pilot Granted Asylum in Jordan
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/world/middleeast/syrian-warplane-is-reported-missing.html?_r=1
Gay Chinese man charging persecution granted U.S. asylum
http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-29/us/9909_29_gay.chinese.asylum_1_asylum-gay-men-chinese-foreign-ministry?_s=PM:US
I won't bore you with the code, but we too grant asylum although our government does not always call it that. Here is our government's policy on asylum.
Asylum
Asylum status is a form of protection available to people who:
Meet the definition of refugee
Are already in the United States
Are seeking admission at a port of entry
You may apply for asylum in the United States regardless of your country of origin or your current immigration status. For more information about asylum status, see the “Asylum” section.
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextchannel=1f1c3e4d77d73210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextoid=1f1c3e4d77d73210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD
The United States honors the right of asylum of individuals as specified by international and federal law. A specified number of legally defined refugees, who apply for asylum either overseas or after arriving in the U.S., are admitted annually. Refugees compose about one-tenth of the total annual immigration to the United States, though some large refugee populations are very prominent. Since World War II, more refugees have found homes in the U.S. than any other nation and more than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980. In the years 2005 through 2007, the number of asylum seekers accepted into the U.S. was about 40,000 per year. This compared with about 30,000 per year in the UK and 25,000 in Canada, countries with much smaller populations. The U.S. accounted for 15% to 20% of all asylum-seeker acceptances in the OECD countries in recent years.[1]
Asylum eligibility has three basic requirements. First, an asylum applicant must establish that he or she fears persecution.[2] Second, the applicant must prove that he or she would be persecuted on account of one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and social group. Third, an applicant must establish that the government is either involved in the persecution, or unable to control the conduct of private actors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_in_the_United_States
And, of course I have mentioned the famous case of Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary -- granted asylum in our US Embassy in Budapest where he lived for 15 years -- I repeat 15 years.
We recently granted entry into the US to a Chinese asylum-seeker. We refuse to call it asylum although our law permits granting asylum in the US. Here is Wikileaks' article on this:
Chen Guangcheng (born 12 November 1971) is a Chinese civil rights activist who worked on human rights issues in rural areas of the People's Republic of China. Blind from an early age and self-taught in the law, Chen is frequently described as a "barefoot lawyer" who advocates women's rights and the welfare of the poor. He is best known for exposing alleged abuses in official family-planning policy, often involving claims of violence and forced abortions.
In 2005, he became internationally known for organising a class-action lawsuit against the city of Linyi in Shandong for what was claimed to be excessive enforcement of the one-child policy. As a result of this lawsuit, Chen was placed under house arrest from September 2005 to March 2006, with a formal arrest in June 2006. During his trial, Chen's attorneys were forbidden access to the court, leaving him without a proper defender. On 24 August 2006, Chen was sentenced to four years and three months for "damaging property and organising a mob to disturb traffic".
. . . .
Chen's case received sustained international attention, with the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Secretary, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International issuing appeals for his release; the latter group designated him a prisoner of conscience. Chen is a 2007 laureate of the Ramon Magsaysay Award and in 2006 was named to the Time 100.
In April 2012, Chen escaped his house arrest and fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. After negotiations with the Chinese government, he left the embassy for medical treatment on early May 2012, and it was reported that China would consider allowing him to travel to the United States to study. On 19 May 2012, Chen, his wife, and his two children were granted U.S. visas and departed Beijing for New York City.
Our stance on Assange is quite dissonant with our law and our historic recognition of asylum for prisoners of conscience and the persecuted. This is another reason why some of us strongly suspect that Sweden's desire to "interview" Assange is a pretext for carrying out some sort of deal with the US.
Siding with the Brits in their escalating feud with Ecuador about the status of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the State Department declared today that the United States does not believe in the concept of ‘diplomatic asylum' as a matter of international law.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/17/state_department_the_us_does_not_recognize_the_concept_of_diplomatic_asylum
The US wants "free trade" to the detriment of American workers but doesn't want "free information" about what the US does in its foreign policy. Yet another dissonance.
= new reply since forum marked as read
- Any man will do!
